


Of Big Brothers and Little Brothers part 2

by Unbreakable92



Series: Of Big Brothers and Little Brothers [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers Family, Awesome Jarvis (Iron Man movies), Awesome Natasha, Awesome Pepper Potts, Brian Banner's A+ Parenting, Bruce Banner & Tony Stark Friendship, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Bruce Feels, Bruce Has Issues, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Is a Good Bro, Domestic Avengers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Natasha Feels, Natasha Needs a Hug, Poor Bruce, Protective Avengers, Protective Clint, Protective Natasha, Protective Pepper Potts, Protective Steve, Protective Thor, Protective Tony, Science Bros, Team Bonding, Team Feels, Team as Family, Thor Is Not Stupid, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Is a Good Bro, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-17 00:50:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5847454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unbreakable92/pseuds/Unbreakable92
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha comes to realise how much she has come to care for the team in such a short amount of time. Here are people that had her back which was something she only ever entrusted Clint to do.</p><p>Tony and Bruce continue to act in a way that confuses, but warms her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Big Brothers and Little Brothers part 2

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone!
> 
> Thanks so much for all the kudos and lovely comments on part one of my story!
> 
> This is so much more Natasha-centric than I ever planned! This first chapter is fairly slow, more setting up for the team interactions to come and just giving the reader an idea of what is going on in Natasha's head.
> 
> Also, I wrote more of Clint! He is one character I have never gotten to know so I did a lot of reading up on him. I found one tid-bit really interesting where it says Clint is a great judge of character and very forgiving. He takes Natasha in rather than killing her, despite her reputation as the Black Widow, and also, much later on, forgives Wanda for what she did and gives her the killer pep-talk she needed. So, I've incorporated that part of Clint's personality into this, showing how he can tell if a person is good or bad.
> 
> Hope you enjoy and please leave any comments to say what you think, what you might like to see in coming chapters (I can't make any promises, but I'm always interested to hear!) and/or any advice you have!
> 
> Thanks everyone!

‘What’s on your mind, Tash?’

Natasha glared at Clint’s smirking profile. His eyes were on the passing buildings of New York, but she knew how he could divide his attention equally without even trying. She considered lying to him, but that was pointless. After all these years, Clint knew her too well. Most people thought she sat in apathetic silence because she was just a trained assassin with a one track mind that only thought of her next mission.

Clint didn’t though. He knew how she liked horror movies because for some reason, she laughed at everything that happened, finding it so unrealistic that a killer could catch up to someone no matter how slow they walked. He knew she liked to swim in a river, but didn’t like the ocean because she felt like there were just too many elements she couldn’t control or hated pools because that was where she had executed a businessman just because the Red Room had commanded it. He knew that when she was quiet with her lips pursed the slightest bit that she was in deep thought.

She glanced to the small barrier that blocked Happy Hogan from hearing her and Clint’s conversation. The spy inside her said there could be bugs anywhere, particularly knowing this vehicle belonged to Tony Stark, but the other part of her, the more human part that had been brought out by all the interactions with Clint and his family, asked why would Tony do that?

Then she flashed back to Natalie Rushman.

‘Tash, I can practically promise you there are no bugs in this limousine,’ Clint said, not bothering to turn away from the window as Natasha began running her lithe fingers over the rubbers around the doors, pulling them out and deftly feeling inside to see if any bump made itself known.

‘How?’ she asked, tracing along every inch of the material covering the roof.

He just shrugged. ‘Stark’s solid.’

That actually made Natasha pause in trying to pull up the plush carpet on the floor.

‘What makes you say that?’ she asked, genuinely curious as she leaned back on her haunches.

This time, Clint turned away from the window and gave her his full attention, grey eyes intense with contemplation.

‘I guess,’ he said softly, the closest he ever got to shyness, ‘the same way I knew you were.’

Natasha’s smile was instant and fond. ‘Feeling particularly nostalgic today, Clinton?’

He didn’t react to her teasing and instead, cocked his head as though trying to read what was going through her mind. ‘What were you thinking about, Nat?’

She glanced quickly again to the front. Happy appeared to be talking to someone on the phone as his mouth opened and closed intermittently.

Slipping back into her seat, she centred herself by concentrating on Clint’s eyes. She had always found them grounding and reassuring, just like the way they were when she had first met him, even when staring at him with his bow drawn, arrow aimed directly at her neck. She knew he was going to lower it before he actually did.

‘Do you find this,’ she gestured around herself, movements small and controlled because it was so ingrained in her, ‘all a bit strange?’

‘What? Riding in Stark’s limousine?’ Quick as lightning, he leaned into the mini-bar fridge, extracting a Fredo Frog and small jar of caviar. ‘I mean, his food choices are questionable, but what did you really expect of a guy that carries around dehydrated,’ here, he shivered exaggeratedly, ‘blueberries?’

She rolled her eyes at him. ‘No, I mean these team bonding exercises? It’s like telling someone, “Okay, bond. Now.”’

‘I think that’s the purpose behind exercise _s_ ,’ Clint said, emphasising the plural of the word. ‘Besides, we bonded pretty damn well over, you know, saving the whole world thing from aliens.’ Here, he waved his hand flippantly. ‘So, we already know these people pretty good. It should go well.’ He shrugged again, going for nonchalance, but Natasha could see he was actually excited on some level to be with these group of ... _unique_ people again. 'It might even be fun.'

‘Then, why even do it in the first place if we’re “bonded”.’ She even used air quotes and everything, but for some reason, she felt extremely put-out by having to participate in this exercise.

It had been three days since the disaster of the team meeting. On the second day, Tony had called her up, babbling so much it actually took her a solid ten seconds to realise he’d thrown a question in there. Since the meeting incident, as she was calling it in her head, she had been extremely off her game, mind wandering off to contemplate on things she hadn’t given it permission to.

‘Come again?’ she had deadpanned.

There was an indeterminable grumble followed by a distinctly female voice in the background before Tony finally groused, ‘I _said_ , you, me, Legolas, Capsicle, Green Jelly Bean and Point Break, tomorrow night, a,’ here, he seemed to actually choke on the next two words, ‘team … bonding,’ a painful cough, ‘night.’ More talking in the background before he begrudgingly offered, ‘I’ll even send Happy to pick you up from whatever paddock SHIELD dumps you into.’

If Natasha hadn’t been so caught off-guard by Tony’s offer, she would have had a dig at how Pepper was obviously the one in charge and didn’t he feel just a little bit unmanly?

‘You want us at your tower,’ she had said blankly, unwillingly putting a slight question into the words.

The sigh on the other end was so exaggerated that it sounded painful. ‘Don’t make me say it again, Red,’ he said, sounding as close to begging as Tony Stark could get, which wasn’t really anything at all.

‘To … bond …’ she said slowly, running the words over and over through her head.

Nope. No matter which way she thought of it, she still thought it was an aneurism on Tony’s part.

‘I’m not braiding your hair,’ Tony said on the other end, sounding like he was finally drawing the line somewhere. There was a brief pause then, ‘Well, if it was _Thor’s_ hair …’

Despite herself, she had to give a little grin at the thought of the demigod sitting placidly in front of a plush couch as Tony sat cross-legged behind him, doing his hair with ribbons and hair-ties while Bruce gave directions beside him.

The last person in the vision made something in her clench a little.

‘Will Bruce be there?’

‘Who the hell do you think Green Jelly Bean is? Hill?’

Natasha snorted at that.

Before she could interrogate Tony for the next twenty minutes about what the protocols for the night would be, if there would be any emergency plans in place in case of the Hulk and why the hell did Pepper force him to ask for this in the first place, was he the dumbest genius ever, Clint snatched the cell phone out of her hand from where he had paused in the middle of their sparring match.

‘We’ll be there,’ he said pleasantly.

Natasha had wasted no time in winding him with an open palm to his ribs.

Clint’s chuckle brought her back to present day. ‘Wow, whatever’s on your mind is eating at you big time.’

Natasha told him pleasantly to go to hell in Russian before settling back in the seats so cushioned that it was bordering on stifling.

She tried to enjoy the oncoming shadows dancing across the faces of unknown people but she kept flashing back to one set of eyes speaking of such haunted sadness.

It wasn’t from the other day. It was from those months ago, in that little shack, when he had absently rocked the cradle. He hadn’t been looking at her, but there was something in the simple movement and glimmer in his downcast gaze which made her want to just curl up a little bit.

Then, it was there again when he had looked at her in mid-transformation. That ultimate pain and almost begging for her to win. To destroy him because he didn’t want to be ‘victorious’.

That was something that she couldn’t understand. To not want to succeed wasn’t in her. She would win. She would always win. And even if there was a remote chance she wouldn’t, she would fight for it with her dying breath.

Bruce wouldn’t.

That realisation sent a sick jolt through her and she clamped down on her gag reflex, an ability she had gained as a child when she had been confronted with the blood of her first assassination. The Red Room would have seen that as weakness. Back then, she fought. The thought that someone wouldn’t …

She closed her eyes briefly, wondering why that concerned her so much about someone she hardly knew.

_‘I was good. Until you dragged me back into this freak show.’_

_‘I swear, on my life, I will get you out of this, you will walk away.'_

She hadn’t succeeded. He had plummeted to Earth, alive with no thanks to her.

It wasn’t exactly red in the ledger, but it was words she had actually said at the time without lying. Of course she had been trying to manipulate him into calming down, but what struck her now, at this very moment, was that she had meant it. And she hadn’t fulfilled a promise she had actually meant. That didn’t sit right with her. She always did what she set out to do.

She couldn’t go back and change anything, but maybe she could change his fear now. And make him … fight. And here she thought that Stark was the one with no self-preservation. The problem with Bruce was that if he thought that his winning would hurt someone else, he would happily roll over and die. A little too happily as far as she was concerned.

She didn’t know what it was about the enigma of Bruce Banner that kept drawing her in, but she actually started to find herself interested in the coming night just to see what new piece she could add to the jigsaw that he created.


End file.
